How To Kick Field Goals

It seems like there is a ‘how to’ website for just about anything one could possibly want to learn these days including how to kick field goals.

Indeed, there is no magic button for most beginners learning to kick. Like any other skill worth pursuing, doing this one well takes time, patience, and dedication to learn.

Before we teach kids how to kick field goals, we generally start with a much more basic question which is, ‘how to kick.’  The question is then, can you kick at all?  Do you have the coordination and general feel for a kicking motion using the instep (rather than the toe.)

Football Kicking Holder: ColossusIf the answer is yes, then you can probably learn how to fine tune that soccer style swing to kick a football.

You see, I know what it looks like to watch a talented athlete try to kick a football when he’s never done it before.  I’ve watched NFL players, the best in the league at their position, struggle to kick a football over the crossbar from 20 yards away.

On a smaller scale, my son is one such athlete who excelled at baseball, is a tournament level tennis player but who has never played soccer.  Therefore, he had never actually kicked a ball and had no sense of feel or timing.

Watching him try to kick a football in the seventh grade was a learning experience for me personally.  I realized just what an odd motion the soccer style kick can be for a non-soccer player!

If  a kicker does however, have soccer experience, the coordination required to kick a football in a soccer style fashion is already there.  In fact, our primary task then becomes teaching that kicker how to kick field goals the same way over and over because THAT is what will earn you a spot on a roster!

Whether you are trying to win a spot on your eighth grade team or earn a college scholarship, the fundamentals are the same thankfully.

One of the most interesting aspects of creating this training website for kickers and punters has been to video a multitude of lessons with another former college kicker 2o years my junior (around 20, ahem)…very little has changed in all this time!

In fact, I’d venture to say that aside from some basic equipment like shoe styles and kick off tee designs, the fundamentals of kicking are still the same for the soccer style kicker kicking field goals.

Though this site is a membership site full of articles, forums and video based interaction, we offer lots of advice for free, so lets talk about the basics of how to kick field goals!

How To Kick Field Goals Soccer Style

Why is a soccer background such an important topic for beginners learning to kick footballs? Simply put, every field goal kicker in the professional ranks as well as college (that I am aware of) today kicks with a certain style known as soccer-style place kicking.

Otherwise known as ‘soccer-style kickers’, they kick with the instep of the foot rather than the toe when contact is made.

Toe Ball Kicking ShoeIn the early days of kicking, almost all kickers played another position and kicked field goals when needed by using the tip of the shoe, or the ‘toe’. This was called ‘toe ball’ kicking and toe ball kickers littered the fields on weekends.

There was even a special shoe made to pull the toe back with a string so that toe ballers could use the underside of the toe of the shoe to gain more distance!

The toe ball kicking shoe shown here is meant to kick on the very end of the shoe (no string though on this model).

Though toe ball kicking was the standard for years, it turned out that there was a better, more effective and consistent way to kick field goals. As it turned out, soccer players could adapt quite easily to kicking a football using the same part of the foot used primarily for control in kicking soccer balls.

The bottom line was that ‘control’ became key in soccer-style kicking. Field goal kickers were much better able to ‘feel’ the ball on the foot when using the instep rather than the toe.

Soccer Style Kick

Soccer Style Kick

As soccer style kickers began to display an advantage for teams that used them, it became obvious to coaches that this new style was the future.

Kicking with the instep (the inside of the foot versus the toe) allowed much more room for error with the sweet spot than the old toe ball.  THIS was how to kick field goals!

So, the good news is that if you happen to play soccer today you are probably already a soccer style kicker quite comfortably by nature. You can probably already kick field goals to some degree and we can teach you how to kick field goals much more consistently than you can do today.

However, if you don’t play soccer, all is not lost! Our introductory instruction videos discuss the introduction of the soccer style kick in great detail. We leave nothing to question in the contact segment of Field Goal Basics.

Interested in learning how to kick field goals at your own pace? FieldGoalKicker.com can help with a full video based instructional membership.

We even offer on field clinics for those in the north Georgia area and we will be offering more locations based on member density soon!

We are passionate about helping kids lean how to kick field goals and how to do it well.

Happy kicking!